Skip to main content

Holidays at the Botanical Gardens

Capital Building at Botanic Gardens' Holiday Display
Every year the National Botanical Gardens put on a holiday display made of all natural/organic materials. In the main area they have scale models of important Washington DC landmarks including the Capital building, the White House and the Washington Monument all surrounded by poinsettias.  Then they set up a model train display in one of the wings of the building. This year’s theme was the “World’s Fair” which showcased the many of the architectural achievements from each of the fairs such as the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle.  My husband and I went to see the display last Sunday when it was snowing in DC. Actually one of the best times to go to some of the museums and exhibits is when it is snowing since locals don’t go out in the snow and the city seams almost deserted.  As little as an inch of snow seems to throw people around here into a panic. I'm from the north, so snow doesn't bother me, plus we have the metro here so it is even better no driving. 


I photographed some of the exhibit. (Botanic Garden Gallery)  It was a bit challenging due to the lighting. It was not exactly dim but the lights used through off metering. I ended up using an ISO around 800 to 1600 to compensate for the low light conditions but I was unable to really capture the trains how I would have liked. The nonmoving items came out ok. I also realized shooting at a high ISO isn’t that bad grain wise, especially since I don’t plan on blowing any of these photos up to poster size.  So they are perfect for the internet, basic photo sizes and card.   This showed me I don’t need to be afraid of high ISO values in the digital world. 
Botanic Gardens' Holiday Display

Labels:
Location: United States Botanic Garden, 100 Maryland Avenue Southwest, District of Columbia, 20024

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot .     I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool     The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos.  I started with a fashion grey seam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations.  I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience.  For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions.  I used ISO 100 and 400.  My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...
Post a Comment
Read more